


Shout When You Wanna Get Off the Ride

by delires



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-04
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 23:37:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delires/pseuds/delires
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two bedrooms between three had not been a part of the plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shout When You Wanna Get Off the Ride

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the lovely Laria-Gwyn, I took this down in order to use elements of it in an original story. I've since decided that anything I've posted online is likely to still exist out there somewhere anyway, so not having it here seemed a bit pointless!

Two bedrooms between three had not been a part of the plan. They stand together in the hallway of the house, staring in dismay at the two doors. Arthur already has his Blackberry in one hand, holding it up, trying to get enough signal to sort this mess out.

“It’s fine. I mean, I can just share with...” Ariadne purses her lips and looks behind her, at the two men. “No. You know what? You’re going to have to be gentlemen. I’m taking this room.”

Unwieldy with luggage, suitcase bumping along behind her, she squeezes through one of the doorways. Eames gestures to the second, with a gracious little bow in Arthur’s direction.

“Ladies first.”

Arthur slips his useless phone back into his pocket and levels a glare at Eames’s stupid, smarmy face.

“Did you want me to break your neck for you? Because that’s where this is currently heading.”

This only makes Eames’s smirk grow wider, so Arthur huffs and marches past, unrepentant when the corner of his suitcase clips Eames’s shinbone as he passes. 

In the months after the Fischer job, Arthur has been eager to keep a low profile. No more flashy, corporate jobs; it isn’t like he needs the money. He only takes things that look interesting, a few commissions here and there, to keep him on his toes. This is for the best.

Until, of course, an employer’s limited budget lands you in a rundown house in the back-ass of Vietnam with less beds than people. It is at times like these that Arthur wonders if dropping his resume in the mail to Saito would really be such a travesty.

“Do you prefer the right side of the bed, or the left?” Eames asks, in the same excessively polite tone of voice, even as he is ducking down to rub his bruised shin.

“I don’t care,” Arthur says. He swings his suitcase onto the side furthest from the door. He gets twitchy if he sleeps close to a door.

“So you wouldn’t mind if I take that side?” Eames points to the right side of the bed, where Arthur’s suitcase is.

 _You dick_ , Arthur thinks, staring at Eames’s raised eyebrows. Out loud, he says, “No. Of course not,” and shoves his suitcase across the bed.

*

 

There are very few forgers in the business nowadays. Eames is here because he is actually the forger Arthur hates the least, which is really saying something. Ariadne is here quite simply because she is brilliant.

Arthur sits with her at the rickety kitchen table, which is already papered with her sketches and his shorthand. She is showing him her designs for a stunning Venetian-inspired hotel, tracing careless fingers over the draft lines.

“I did have this positioned over here,” she says, pointing to a particularly voluptuous flourish, “But I felt it was interrupting the, like, intertwining, symbiotic theme I had going on. So, what I did, was move it...” – she fumbles to turn the sketchbook page – “...here. I think that makes it more cohesive. And then, also, it turns this arch into a nice feature, which will draw the eye and provide another distraction.”

Ariadne reminds Arthur so much of himself when he first started to work the business. She is earnest and sharp, so sure of her own abilities. The lines of her drawings are never hesitant; they are bold and sensual. And yet she is still wide-eyed for his approval. Now, she taps the eraser end of her pencil against the tabletop. “What do you think?

“I’m very impressed,” he says, honestly. She smiles, relaxing into it.

“Thanks.”

They pack away their work. Eames is researching in town and they’ve had no word from him. They raid the cupboards and collect together the best of the meagre grocery supplies which have been left for them. Bread, cheese, some salami. Ariadne slices raw carrot into sticks and tucks up her legs to sit at the table. She is wearing pyjama pants and no socks. Her pearly toes curl against the edge of her chair. They have a trashy magazine left over from the flight. Together they peer at the glossy pages, commenting idly on the celebrity faces and the colour palettes for the new season.

“I don’t know. I kind of like them.” Ariadne brushes a scattering of breadcrumbs off the faces of the latest old-school band to launch a comeback. “They remind me of being back in high school.”

“I like them, too. They played a gig at my college.” Arthur reaches past her, groping for a carrot stick. The face of his watch brushes against her wrist.

Ariadne looks along the stretch of his arm and then up to his face and says, “I’d love to have seen what you looked like in college. I bet you were a total hipster.”

She is leaning into him a little and strands of her dark hair are escaping her ponytail, hanging sweet about her face.

“I wore scarves just like yours,” Arthur says, to make her laugh.

They hear the roar of a car engine and the clatter of the front door before Eames comes swaggering into the kitchen, with mud on his shoes and a plastic grocery bag swinging from his hand.

“What’s this nonsense?” he asks, picking up the crusty end of the bread on Arthur’s plate and tossing it back down again in disdain.

“It’s what was left,” Arthur says, with a frown.

“We aren’t scavengers,” Eames says. “We should be living the good life. This is more like it.” He rustles in his grocery bag and comes up with a jar of Nutella chocolate spread.   

Eames pulls himself up at the table, unscrewing the lid with relish. Ariadne watches as he pierces the foil seal with a blunt fingernail.

“What are you going to do? Eat it with a spoon? Because I could get on board with that,” she says.

“Well, let’s see, here.” Eames surveys the remains of the food on the table. Then, he takes a piece of carrot and plunges it into the Nutella.

“That’s revolting,” Arthur says, watching Eames chew on his snack abomination and nod in approval.

“How do you know that? You haven’t tried it, yet,” Ariadne says, dipping her own carrot experimentally into the jar. Arthur snorts.

“I haven’t tried hacking off one of my arms with a rusty saw. But I’m fairly confident that I wouldn’t like that either.”

Eames waves a carrot stick in Arthur’s direction, flinging a little blob of Nutella onto the table.

“Now, that _is_ horrible. Having done both, I can assure you that this is far more pleasant.”

Arthur scowls. “Dreams don’t count.”

“You wouldn’t think it, but this is pretty good,” Ariadne says. She licks her lips, just missing a chocolatey smear at the very corner of her mouth. Arthur stares at it and thinks about wiping it away with the pad of his thumb.

He is still thinking about it when Eames says, “You’ve got a little-,” and reaches past Arthur to swipe his knuckle casually against Ariadne’s mouth.

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

Ariadne runs the tip of her tongue around her lips, smirking at Eames when he grins at her. She swirls another carrot stick into the chocolate.

“This one time in Prague, when I was inter-railing, we went to this little restaurant where they served us beef with dollops of cream and jam. Sounds revolting. But it was actually delicious.” She holds the carrot stick, loaded with gloopy chocolate, right out under Arthur’s nose. “Doesn’t hurt to try.”

Eames is watching them. “Live a little,” he says.

“No. Thank you.” Arthur pulls back, gets to his feet and tucks in his chair neatly.

*

 

Apparently, there is an extra monsoon season in this part of the country, which nobody warned them about. The weather interrupts their work. It rains torrentially for two days, the droplets pounding down and pounding down, until the whole house aches with weary tension.

The town floods. The dirt track leading up to the house is turned into a quagmire. Their employer refuses to venture along it, telling them to wait until things begin to clear. After the second day of being cooped up, cabin fever begins to set in. Arthur is almost certain that at least one of them will not make it out of this job in one piece. Specifically, Eames will not make it out, because Arthur is going to strangle him.

The generator keeps cutting in and out, plunging the house into spells of darkness. Arthur and Ariadne sit in the kitchen over bitter cups of Vietnamese coffee, playing cards by the light of their battery-powered lamp.

When Eames emerges from the bedroom after a nap, sleep-mussed and yawning, he takes the seat between them, leaning too close to Arthur so that he can see his cards. He chuckles out loud at the terrible hand, which ruins Arthur’s carefully-played bluff.

“I had a strange dream,” Eames says, helping himself to Arthur’s coffee. “You were dressed like Liza Minnelli in Cabaret and doing that number with the chairs. It was quite strange. Not unpleasant, though.”

“You’re an idiot,” Arthur says.

Ariadne considers her cards and then tosses down two more matchsticks, meeting Arthur’s bet.

“I like Fosse. I like the angles,” she says. “I wish I was a better dancer. I used to take tap lessons. All through middle school.”

“I’m sure you’re a great dancer,” Arthur says, and Ariadne smiles at him, a dim curve of her lips in the shadowy room.

“I tried to take ballet for a while, too.” She lifts one leg, propping her foot against the edge of Eames’s seat. “But I have a shitty turnout. My ankles just aren’t right for it. Do you see? The way it curves like that?”

Arthur can see her cards; she has them tilted towards him in a careless fan. Yet the numbers all blur into nothing as Eames wraps his broad fingers around the slender bones of her ankle.

“Yes. I see,” Eames says, deadpan. “These are quite possibly the most hideous ankles I’ve ever seen.”

Ariadne kicks her toes hard against his thigh.

“I’m sure they’re prettier than yours.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I have delightful ankles,” Eames says. He goes to the cupboard, coming back with a bottle of gin and some glasses. Then he starts talking to Ariadne about the Royal Ballet, which Arthur knows nothing about and can’t really comment on.

*

 

An hour later the generator whirrs back to life and Ariadne goes to shower while there is power enough to heat the water. Arthur takes the opportunity to plug in his drained laptop. He sets about composing a scathing email to their employer, full of ultimatums and veiled threats.

While Arthur types, Eames sits at the table, drinking gin and watching him with hot eyes. Arthur ignores the tingle of Eames’s gaze on the back of his neck. The voice is harder to ignore, though, when it is soft and liquor-slurred and saying, “Do you dream about me, Arthur?”

Arthur thumps the backspace key. Retypes.

“Dancing cabaret?”

“Doing anything.”

“No, Eames. I don’t dream about you.”

“I think that’s a lie.”

It is already late and Arthur’s eyes are aching with residual jetlag. He wants to take Eames’s gin bottle and wedge it down his throat.

“You can think what you like.” Arthur closes his laptop and tucks it under his arm.

The walls in the hallway are painted a sickly peach, although there are patches where the colour is starting to peel, revealing sky-blue underneath. As Arthur is passing the bathroom door, Ariadne emerges from it, into his path. 

Her hair is wet and her cheeks pink from the hot water. Little droplets are still clinging to her throat. They edge down towards her breasts, the curves of which are just starting to peek above her towel. She smiles, hiking the material up further, tucking it around her more snugly.

Arthur is careful to look directly at her face. He’s had practice at that.

“I think there’s still some heat in there. If you want it,” she says, jerking her head towards the steam-filled bathroom. Her eyes are very bright; she’s a little buzzed from the gin.

“Thank you,” Arthur says. He steps aside to let her by.

*

 

The power cuts out halfway through Arthur’s shower. He is just contemplating jerking off, when cold water is suddenly gushing all over his body, killing his wood.

This is about in line with what Arthur has come to expect from the evening.

Shivering, he shuts off the shower and steps out, fumbling in the dark for his towel, stubbing a toe against the toilet bowl.

As he gropes his way back to the bedroom Arthur is prickly with goosebumps and frustration. It does not help matters that Eames is there, rifling through a suitcase by the light of their second battery lamp. Arthur’s clothes are clutched to his damp chest. He considers turning around, heading back to the bathroom, but the long stretch of treacherous hallway dissuades him.

He dumps the pile of his clothing onto the side of the bed he has been sleeping on - the wrong side, the side too close to the door. Eames notices him. Turns around. Stands up straight.

“Should I close my eyes?” he says, and Arthur can see the edges of his smirk in the lamplight. The shadows make Eames look bigger. They add bulk to the already broad spread of his shoulders. Probably, he thinks he is intimidating.

Arthur drops his towel. He takes his time, reaching for his underwear, stepping into them, pulling them on. He runs a hand through his wet hair and looks up at Eames.

“You don’t scare anyone, you know.”

The nuances of Eames’s expression are difficult to see in the gloom, but he steps near, his face weaving far too close to Arthur’s.

“Really?”

Arthur can hear his own breathing in the quiet room; he can hear how quick and shallow it becomes as Eames reaches one large hand down, down, as though intending to cup Arthur through his underwear.

“If that hand connects...” Arthur warns, before Eames can touch him. His voice is a deadly whisper. The warm palm stops just centimetres shy of Arthur’s crotch.

Eames makes a thick noise at the back of his throat, a little growl of displeasure, and a jolt of arousal catches Arthur by surprise. He fights the urge to lean closer, as Eames moves his palm slowly upwards, dragging it through the air above Arthur’s skin.

Without touching, Eames traces the shape of Arthur’s navel, his chest, his collar-bones, up to his neck, where Eames’s fingers twitch with the promise to wrap around his throat. Arthur can feel the burning of that hand through the particles of air between them.

“You’re a bloody little cock-tease. It’s not sporting, darling,” Eames says. His lips are so close to Arthur’s face, but Arthur refuses to be the first to back down.

“I don’t care about sportsmanship.”

From the heart of the house, there comes the metallic clatter of kitchen utensils and then Ariadne’s voice, reaching through the bedroom’s open door.

“Eames?”

Eames turns his head towards her voice.

“Yes, love?”

Another clatter.

“I can’t work the- I don’t know how this- What the hell is the deal with this stove?”

Arthur still does not move, even as Eames calls, “Hang on. I’m coming,” and steps finally away, leaving Arthur in a rush of empty air.

*

 

Arthur dresses slowly. The sound of Ariadne’s laughter is bubbling from the kitchen. He takes the lamp and carries it with him through the dark house, following the sound.

A pan of water is beginning to simmer above a ring of gas. Ariadne’s hair is still damp, a little fluffy from lack of product, and Eames’s hands are on her. She is scrabbling at his wrists, making a show of trying to wrestle him away. Though, she could certainly be trying harder. As their hips knock playfully together, Arthur feels a curl of something hot and dark, right in the pit of his stomach.

He sets the lamp down beside the half-full glasses of gin and the packet of ramen noodles. He does this harder than he means to. It makes a dull thump, shakes the glasses. The battery-powered bulb flickers from the jolt.

“What are you guys talking about?” he asks.

Ariadne is still calming herself, wiping tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes, but Eames turns to Arthur and says, “Nothing. Just about how much both of us would love to bend you over and stick things up your tight little arse.”

It is this job. Or this house. Or perhaps just Eames’s presence here, always in the way. But something snaps. Arthur is lunging for him, getting a tight grip on Eames’s shirt, shaking him.

“As if you talk to people that way. As if you got this far through life when you talk that way!”

“Hey!”

A chair topples over as Ariadne shoves it aside and then she is forcing her small body between them, digging biting nails into Arthur’s hand, which is fisted in Eames’s shirt. Arthur can see the way that her eyes flash. It is enough to make his grip slacken, allowing Eames to pull free.

In the kitchen doorway, Eames tugs the collar of his shirt back into place.

“I don’t talk to most people that way. You just bring it out in me,” he says, before he slinks off into the dark.

The water in the pan is about to boil over. One of the lamps on the table is starting to hum, a low mosquito-like whine. Arthur can’t remember if they have any replacement batteries. He sinks into a chair, although Ariadne stays standing. The lamplight turns her pale skin to gold.

“I’m sorry about him. It’s like he was raised in the wild,” Arthur says. He stares down at the pink crescents that Ariadne’s nails have left on his skin. “Me too, I suppose.”

“It’s okay.” Ariadne bends down, and rights the fallen chair. “In Eames’s defence, though, that is what we were talking about.”

There is a little quirk to her lips, as she switches off the flame beneath the pan on her way out of the kitchen.

Arthur can’t tell if she is joking or not. And he cannot even begin to explain the way that her words make his heart start to race.

*

 

Arthur stands in the dark hallway, between two closed doors.

For a while, he lingers in front of the room he shares with Eames, one palm against the wood.

Then, he turns and opens Ariadne’s door instead.

The generator kicks in, with a whir and a click, just as the door swings open beneath Arthur’s hand. In the fresh glare of light he sees flashes of bare skin, the black straps of Ariadne’s bra, the winding ink across Eames’s biceps.

The door crashes on its hinges as Arthur steps backwards, blundering back into the hall.

Right away, Ariadne is there, touching him, saying, “Don’t freak out.”

But Arthur is freaking out. That must be obvious. Ariadne stretches onto her tiptoes and places a palm against his cheek to kiss him. He feels the spring of her breasts, pressing against him, and then he is pulling her closer, breathing her in. Her nimble little fingers are tugging at the bottom of his shirt, working it free from his pants.

As her lips slip away, Arthur turns, to find Eames beside them. He takes Arthur’s face in his hands and pushes a thumb between Arthur’s lips.

Ariadne has hold of Arthur’s hand. She is rolling his sleeve up over his forearm, pressing her mouth against the skin there. Arthur curls his tongue around the tip of Eames’s thumb and then Eames is kissing him hard, like a returning sailor, forcing a bend into Arthur’s back.

Ariadne’s fingers are a lifeline, laced between his own. Arthur squeezes them as he pulls his mouth away from Eames, turning his head so that Eames’s lips find only the corner of his jaw when they try to follow.

“This is-” Arthur begins.

“It’s perfection. Don’t spoil it. I can tell you’re about to,” Ariadne says, running a fingertip down his cheek.

Eames’s strong arms are winding around Arthur’s waist from behind. His mouth is hot on the nape of Arthur’s neck. Arthur presses back into it, feeling the hard bulge of Eames’s erection against his ass.

Ariadne is trailing kisses along Arthur’s throat. She takes his hand and guides it beneath the waistband of her pyjama pants, under the cotton of her panties. Arthur can feel her against his fingertips, hot and damp. He sinks a finger into her, feels her eyelashes flutter against his collarbone.

And the generator blinks out.

 


End file.
